Just over at AirwaysMag.com, I posted a new blog about planning safety aboard an airliner. Here’s a snippet:

It has been over a hundred years now since man has taken to the sky under his own mechanical power, and safety has advanced dramatically. It may be a cliche now, but it remains one of my favorite sayings: “Safety is No Accident—it must be planned.”

Yep, every flight comes with a LOTTA paperwork!

Yes, safety must be planned. While every airline has a system in place to maximize safety, there are still critical issues that must be addressed every single time, in order to plan that accident-free flight. Every system ever built by man, at least so far, needs some semblance of human intervention and judgement in order to be tweaked to “maximum safety.”

For example, when I board my A321 aircraft, I am handed a stack of paperwork, called the “Dispatch Release.” It is the Flight Plan, in a nutshell. A professional Dispatcher inputs the parameters for the flight. A very sophisticated computer program plans the flight based on winds, ride and weather for the most efficient route. The Dispatcher then takes this plan that the computer spits out, reviews and tweaks it. He then sends it to me.

The Release will contain such items as . . .

Be sure to catch my new blog post for Airways Magazine,

Safety-A Frightfully Serious Matter

at:

Don’t Forget, as you flit about your regular rounds of Halloween parties this year, keep a keen eye out for all the little ghosts, goblins, pilots, ballerinas and astronauts canvassing your ‘hood for tricks n treats.

Eric Auxier

Airline pilot by day—Writer by night—Kid by choice!

WELCOME ABOARD!
I'm an A321 captain for a major U.S. airline. I may have over 22,000 hours in the cockpit, but I am still madly in love with flying. Through this blog, I share with you the magic, the joy, and the travails that is the airline pilot career. Life's an adventure—life in the sky, exponentially so!